RISTAC - My Personal Blog

Like many who have previously shopped at eBuyer, I received an email informing me that they were going to be having a crash sale on Monday 28th November with all sale items listed at £1.00. The sale was due to start at 11.00am but if you ‘liked’ the eBuyer facebook page you would earn yourself a 30 minute head start on everyone else, well not quite everyone as an impressive 48,000 people clicked that little old like button.

 I wondered if it would be the usual tat these kind of sales usually have for sale, the kind of stuff more suitable for a car boot sale, maybe a few cables, blank CDs cable ties and the kind of stuff you could find in any old pound shop. Curiosity grabbed me and just before 10.30am I made my way to the eBuyer home page; that was the last time I saw it until around 21.00hrs. Despite several attempts to see what this wonderful £1 sale had to offer I never even managed to get the front page to load, not alone see what I bargain I might have grabbed.

In a second browser window I had the eBuyer facebook page open which was filling up at a rate of a new page a second with angry and disgruntled customers. At one stage I caught a post by eBuyer themselves saying we are sorry some of you are having problems it is due to the unprecedented demand?? Hang on a second, firstly ‘some of you’ more like 99% of us and secondly eBuyer is a technology store, they sell computer parts and they never realised that their servers were not up to 48k people visiting all at once instead eBuyer launched their very own DDoS attack on themselves.

Today the eBuyer facebook page is still filling with angry customers, not just those that never managed to see what fantastic £1 deals there were but customers who completed checkout only to be told today that the item they thought they had grabbed for a pound was out of stock. So what now for eBuyer? They still have 48,000 facebook likes, google will love all those likes and that is 48,000 people eBuyer can advertise to with a single post. They have a few thousand disgruntled customers to contend with but that should be easy to sort. I would expect to see a more realistic sale announced before Christmas, probably a 25% - 30% sale.

We are all very forgiving when it comes to bargains and we all have short memories so I dare say those complaining will be straight back looking for a bargain if or when the next sale is announced. Scam, Disaster or Great Marketing Ploy?

It is that time of year again where family ask you what you would like for Christmas. I am lucky, my wife does spoil me spending far too much (but I like it), however when it comes to others asking what you would like or can they have a list to select from I always stumble wondering what to put down? You don’t want to look greedy putting down items that are over £50 but then most things that are under that price bracket I already have them if I want them. My movie and music collection is all in digital format so it leaves my list looking something like boxer shorts, aftershave, socks and a computer game that I probably will not play much, maybe an hour total as I am not a big games player. Then the comments start, usually along the lines of a groan and a moan that I pick the same old things every year. I guess I am just spoilt, yes I will consider myself lucky and yes I do realise that Christmas is about giving not receiving but excuse me, I have a list to write!!